


nary a sound, nary a whimper

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Body Dysphoria, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren becomes what he hates, and finds that coping is not a word in his vocabulary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nary a sound, nary a whimper

**Author's Note:**

> For an snkkink prompt.

What does he look like as a titan?

Is he one of the small squat ones that go after children? One of the tall ones that lurch about, unbalanced by their distended bellies? Is he one of the ones with lopsided, bloodstained smiles who lower their eyelids in pleasure as they take down soldiers in one gulp? Or is he like the titan that devoured his mother, leaving only the legs behind, large tombstone teeth, a ghoulish grin?

Eren lives each day as if in a dream, screaming himself awake, remembering the fear and confusion, his mother’s bones crushed between his teeth, her insides tangled about his tongue, blood smeared on his lips. The guards shout at him to be quiet, that his ploys at sympathy won’t work, but sympathy no longer means a thing to him, not when he’s not human, not when his chains shake and rattle and the sounds of his breathing echo loud and uneasy in his ears. What remains of his days he spends in silence, waiting for the torches to burn down; he has long learned not to ask for anything aside from the one restroom break he gets right before his single, daily meal, a half full bowl of gruel and hard, day-old bread. The guards are careless, spill the bowl, and what is left is mopped up with a single swipe of mouse-nibbled crust. But he learns to subdue the pangs of hunger, learns to curl up tight on the bed, heavy chains draped over his body, learns to count the bricks lining the wall on the other side, seeking patterns in the cracks and holes.

Hollow, he is empty of anger, empty of all feeling, because monsters do not feel. His mother is not there, his father is not there, Mikasa is not here, Armin is not here, he is not here. The monster is here, he lives and breathes through him, and he can remember nothing, only remembers clawing at wet earth, liquid pain burning through his bloodstream, the bright sheen of the brass key that hangs heavy on his neck. A hole in his memory, gaping obscenely wide, and had he been a monster then too, a monster as his mother held him and nursed him in her arms, destined to grow tall and strong and hideous, to eat lives, futures and dreams? His shirt is rough on his skin, scratchy; he rubs his face absently on the bedspread. Sensation. Feeling. Two normal hands, two normal feet, sixty-three kilograms of blood, bone, flesh.

Human? No. Never human. No matter how much he wishes it, no matter how much he wants it, he knows it deep in his gut, in the curl of his palm, knows that humanity is just another thing he does not deserve. There are hundreds, thousands of things he does not deserve, because one day,  he will wake up spattered with blood, human gristle in between his teeth and  raw flesh buried deep under his fingernails.

He had been angry at first, afraid, chained and abandoned and spat upon, but he has had centuries, eons of silence in this dark cell. He had seen Armin’s face as he had fallen back, blood from the stump of his arm ribboning away as he fell down a titan’s throat, furious and scared, desperate and unprepared for death—blue eyes had been lit with despair, a voice only recently broken into adulthood screaming for him, screaming his name. He had seen the remnants of soldiers, dragged through the ruined streets of Trost before exhaustion had overtaken him. His continued existence is an anomaly, a condition of his monstrosity, just one more thing that he does not deserve. What separates him from the other soldiers, that he is allowed to live and they are not?

He’ll never be allowed to live. He’ll never be allowed to dream. He’ll never leave the walls and will stay here for however long his life will last, an animal like the rest of them, a beast, waiting to be slaughtered. To say that he is Hope is laughable, to say that he is Humanity’s Hope is folly, plain and simple. He is nothing but death and destruction. He’ll either be killed, or used until every last drop of information or strength is wrung from him, and then they’ll cut him down anyway. He can see it, in the eyes of his guards, in the eyes of the officials who come down to jeer at him, tugging at tight collars, the cold sweat of the frightened sliding down their faces.

That he did his best to gain his freedom only to lose it entirely is endlessly amusing, and sometimes he can’t help the high, choking giggles that rise from his throat, scratching and fighting like live things, and the guards that tremble and scream hoarsely at him, blades held in shaking hands, make him laugh longer, harder. Cowards who have never seen titans, who barely use their maneuver gear could never kill him, for he is a monster and only the brave, only the free would be able to bring him down.

The wings of the free, the wind that ruffled through his hair as he was flung through the trees for the first time, the sensation that felt so much like flying, weightless, unburdened, and he had wondered that if he flew high enough, he might be able to see the sea, that sparkling blue vista, bluer and brighter than Armin’s eyes, purer and more natural than anything he would ever see inside the walls. To be killed with that kind of spirit, with that kind of goal, he would never fear an executioner who came to him with those intentions, because they were his, once upon a time. Once upon a time—isn’t that how stories begin?

But this is not a story. The shackles and chains on his child’s hands have real weight, as do the accusations leveled against him in the courtroom. He can say nothing to defend himself here—his feelings are the same, but his body is not. He would give himself to humanity, fight long and hard to see all the titans dead and gone, just steam rising from the flatlands, but his body does not know what his mind does. His mind reels, panic rises on his tongue. Kill Mikasa? Imagines red on red, a body crushed and mangled, swatted like the fly Mikasa tries to excuse him with. But he sees Armin’s calculated expression, sees the reality reflected there, not fear, but apprehension and anxiety, and something in him withers, cowers, cries, recalls how his mother screams and pleads in his nightmares, remembers the bloody broken bodies of Shiganshina and Trost, wonders how long, how long. Mikasa, strong Mikasa, who watched him and defended him and protected him, he doesn’t want her to be cut down, she who stands so tall and strong, steel lodged at the core of her body, so strong he admires and hates her for it, and he screams one more time, argues for her life, because even if monsters exist to be killed, Mikasa is the most human of them all. His heart beats loud and clear in his ears, the roar of the crowd distant, and he yells, shouts—if he is to die, he wants to die fighting. No matter how pathetic, how futile it is for him to hold this wish, it is his. His will is not something that can be taken away, his will is what fuels him, has fueled him, these long five years, and it is his will, his anger, his pain and his fear that makes him a monster. Only he knows the secret—the monster does not only belong to him, he too, belongs to the monster.

The crack of Corporal Levi’s boot against his face is both a relief and an irritant—something to hold on to in the midst of uncertainty, familiar anger rising to the fore. He takes the blows, does not speak, to fight back would be to prove his accusers right. The boot that comes down atop his head, grind his face into stone, directs his blurry gaze to Mikasa and Armin. Armin flinches, looks away, Mikasa stares back, anger and determination apparent in the set of her mouth. But her strength will be useless here.

The trial is completed, manipulated to the whim of the Scouting Legion. He is left alive.

There is no longer trust—the members of Levi’s Squad watch over him distantly, train him until he is run ragged, and his basement room is cold and damp, makes him think of his little cage in the dungeon. He sleeps fitfully, tosses and turns, wakes up to stare into the dark, knowing that even if he shouts no one will come. The dark becomes his friend and companion, and down in the well the dark is what soothes him as he bites his palms bloody and thinks that he’ll never remove the taste of iron from his mouth, looks up, up into the clear, blue sky he sees above him, feels small. A frog in a well, only dreaming of the world outside. That day, he discovers the whimsy of a monster who only wants to pick up a teaspoon, the sentimentality of dreaming of a day when he would sit next to his friends, drink tea and read books together again, and realizes the loneliness of monsters who cannot help their nature.

The members of his trainee group arrive, and he does not know them anymore. Marco is dead, and Jean turns to him, reminds him of all the lives he could take, all the lives he now has to shoulder. He wants to tell Jean that he can’t do it, that he can’t carry anything anymore, can’t carry anyone anymore, that he wakes up with a mouth full of iron, darkness in his mind, and the knowledge that one day he too will be eaten, absorbed into the monster. He nods, gives Jean that much. Jean is already a much better person than he is, that is indisputable.

But they trail him with their eyes, whisper about him behind his back. Reiner and Bertholdt’s quiet stares, Sasha and Connie’s nervous tittering when he comes near, the unnerving silence from Armin when he falls and slices his leg almost to the bone, the steam that billows when the cut heals itself in seconds. Mikasa, whose cheek is scarred because of him, becomes moving stone, unyielding, silently frantic and fevered. He never sees them anymore, never talks to them anymore, stays in his cage obediently, does what the Corporal tells him to. He lies in his bed at night, stares into the gloom, wonders if everyone is playing a quiet game of cards in the barracks like to they used to, if they’re telling each other lame jokes, if any of them remember him as he was. Conversations with Armin and Mikasa are stilted, mutilated things, and he can see Armin wavering, Armin, who wants to trust him, but knows just as well as Eren does that his body is not reliable, that his body will betray him.

Early morning in the kitchen, and he cuts himself with a bread knife while preparing his breakfast. He watches the blood bead briefly, before the wound closes with a puff of steam. Vague desperation besets him as he does it again, and again, but the wound closes up every single time, and he hears a loud whining sound and he discovers that it’s coming from him. His hands are bloody, and the Corporal is going to kill him for the mess he’s leaving on the floor, but his wounds do not stay open, his wounds just keep closing and closing, even when he digs his fingers in, even when he pries open the wounds, gaping and glistening, red and obscene, and when he finally stabs the knife into his arm and slices into a vein, the spray doesn’t last nearly long enough.

He leaves no marks on any person in the world, leaves no mark on himself, leaves no proof that he has ever lived. Eren Jaeger, 15. They might as well kill him with their own hands.

They find him crying, curled up in a puddle of his own blood, and when Erd asks him if he attacked anybody, his, Petra’s, Auruo’s and Gunter’s hands reaching for their weapons, Eren cannot do anything but laugh.

 

 


End file.
